Digital Commons @ American University Washington College of Law
Abstract
In this effective and engaging book, J. Shoshanna Ehrlich uncovers the hidden agendas underlying the long history of the law\u27s regulation of female adolescent sexuality. Ehrlich persuasively demonstrates that a multitude of laws purporting to protect public health in one form or another in fact encode the value of female virtue into law based upon a set of assumptions about their sexuality (3). The book spans a wide time period, moving chronologically through a series of legal reform movements targeting young women\u27s sexuality, from the 1838 effort to criminalize seduction to the modem-day movement promoting abstinence-only sex education. Although the book does not discuss some of the most heated issues surrounding young women\u27s sexuality todaysuch as rape and abortion-Ehrlich\u27s careful historical. storytelling illuminates how gendered sexual purity norms drive much of the law regulating adolescent sexuality
